


Storm Windows

by aeli_kindara



Series: Supernatural Codas [17]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Cabins, Dean's Top 13 Zepp Traxx Mixtape, Episode Tag, Episode: s15e06 Golden Time, Fluff and Angst, Jack comes back, M/M, Season/Series 15, Sharing a Bed, Slow Dancing, Snowed In
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-26
Updated: 2019-11-26
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:33:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21562270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeli_kindara/pseuds/aeli_kindara
Summary: Dean knocks on the storm door. It rattles in its frame.By the glower on Cas’s face when he yanks the inner door open, he already knows it’s Dean outside, and he’s not happy about it. Dean ignores that. Pastes on a grin and says, “Hear we’re on nephilim watch.” He pushes past Cas, dropping his duffel on the end of the couch. “You bring any board games? Think I owe you a round ofSorry.”
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, vaguely implied background Sam/Eileen
Series: Supernatural Codas [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/877383
Comments: 53
Kudos: 546





	Storm Windows

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the [John Prine song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ2iDibMjaU) of the same name.
> 
> Generally G but some language probably snuck in.

“Dean? Dean!”

The call catches Dean with the muesli box raised to his face. He pauses in the act of tipping the last of its contents down his throat.

The doorknob turns, and Sam leans inside. He’s dressed in just a t-shirt and jeans and holding his phone pressed to his chest. His nose wrinkles a little as he takes in Dean’s bedroom. “Dude, when was the last time you showered? Or changed your _pants._ ”

Dean considers, shrugs, and finishes off the muesli before responding. “They’re _hot dogs,_ Sam. Hot dogs.” These pants are awesome.

Sam’s grimace deepens. He nods at the muesli box. “I thought you hated that stuff.”

It’s not that he’s wrong. But Dean finished the cocoa crunch this morning, and Sam’s weird hippie crap is growing on him. Just a little. Not a lot.

“Anyway,” says Sam, tipping his phone meaningfully. “I just got a call. From Cas.”

Dean freezes.

His heart is suddenly haywire in his chest. The way it wasn’t the other day — with Cas on the phone, he just felt calm detachment. Floating. The sort of anger that’s slingshotted you so far around the bend that you’re just outside the pull of gravity altogether.

“He says he’s been sensing, uh — cosmic energy. Forebodings.” Sam swallows. “Maybe — omens. Like he felt when Jack was born.”

It takes a long moment for Dean’s words to unstick from his throat. He nods at the phone. “He still on?”

“Uh — no.” Sam looks apologetic. “He hung up. Listen, it might be nothing, but I thought I could go check it out with him — he’s got it pretty pinpointed, to a spot up in Maine —”

Dean’s already swinging his legs out of bed. “I’ll go.”

Sam starts visibly. “You’ll —?” He blinks.

“I said I’ll go.” Dean puts on his best big-brother smile. “C’mon. You and Eileen, you could use the alone time. I’ll go check it out, see Cas, get out of your hair for a while. Text me the address.”

“Dean,” says Sam, “I don’t know if Cas wants —”

“Text me the address,” Dean repeats, rifling through the pile at the base of his bed for a clean pair of jeans. He finds some, then pointedly drops his pajama pants, which achieves the desired affect of making Sam squawk and turn around.

“At least take a shower,” Sam says into the empty corridor as Dean finds a t-shirt to sniff, shrugs, and throws it on. Then, when Dean opens the door to push past him, “Dean —”

Dean shoves the empty muesli box into his hands and gives him a grin. “Motels have showers, Sammy. Text me the address.”

And he strolls off down the corridor before his brother can protest again.

\---

Jessica the reaper pops up in his front seat a little shy of Chicago.

Dean’s been driving nine hours already, starting to sink into the hypnotic lull of the road. It’s early morning. Not much traffic on the interstate; a few semis, trying to beat the morning rush. Seger playing low.

She isn’t there, and then she is. “Hey, Dean,” she says.

Dean jumps, and swears, and nearly swings his Baby into a guard rail. He straightens out as a semi horn blares. “Don’t _do_ that.”

“Sorry.” She doesn’t sound sorry. “Just thought you’d want to know — it’s real.”

Dean blinks hard. Oncoming headlights thrum through the median barriers, resonating inside his skull. “What’s real?”

“The — omens, or whatever you’re calling it. We’re bringing Jack back. Billie said to tell you. High-level stuff; might take us a few days.”

“You’re — what now?”

But she’s gone.

\---

Dean makes it to Cleveland that night. Could push on, he thinks, but maybe better not to stretch it. Not when he’s maybe-hallucinating reapers in his shotgun seat.

Of all the hallucinations he could be having, he’d rather it be Cas.

\---

Dean rolls over when his alarm goes off after six solid hours of dreamless sleep. His mouth tastes like the armpit of something that died. He gags. Brushes his teeth. Stumbles into the shower.

The sun is bright and hard for the morning drive, glinting off pavement like the edge of a knife. Dean’s grateful when it finally clears his rearview around Buffalo. He presses on, surfing the radio for music — pop, country, pop, country. Goddamn. He finally finds a classic hits station as he swings past Albany.

He laughs when “Sweet Baby James” comes on an hour or so later, into Massachusetts now. _Now the first of December was covered with snow, and so was the turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston —_ but it’s the heat of summer, trees waving green on the roadsides, Baby meditating again on whether her air conditioning truly wants to function.

Dean hits the suburbs of Boston and turns north. The Atlantic creeps up on his right at the New Hampshire border, and then he’s crossing into Maine — running north, further north still. Cities and tide flats fade by, then rocky hills. He splits off from the interstate at Bangor. Two-lane roads through blueberry barrens. A right turn, toward the coast again, somewhere unseen — Dean imagines he can smell salt on the air.

Cas does have a taste for some fucking remote parts of the world. Or maybe Jack does — if that reaper thing wasn’t all a dream.

He checks Sam’s text message again. He can practically see the bitchface that comes with it: _I don’t know if I should tell him you’re coming or not. He’s in Machiasport — here’s the cabin’s address._

Dean knocks on the storm door. It rattles in its frame.

By the glower on Cas’s face when he yanks the inner door open, he already knows it’s Dean outside, and he’s not happy about it. Dean ignores that. Pastes on a grin and says, “Hear we’re on nephilim watch.” He pushes past Cas, dropping his duffel on the end of the couch. “You bring any board games? Think I owe you a round of _Sorry_.”

Cas only squints at him, glare tightening. Dean doesn’t know how Cas can make a squint look scornful, but he does.

They stay like that for a long minute. Then Cas says, “You can take the couch,” and retreats to the bedroom, closing the door behind him with a bang.

\---

Dean wakes up hungry and shivering.

There’s a heavy fog clinging to the cabin’s windowpanes. Dean got in after dark, and now when he rolls off the couch and pads over to look outside, he can’t see much more of their surroundings. A few spruce trees drowning in white mist. When he steps out onto the porch, he can hear invisible gulls calling, waves slapping on rocks somewhere nearby.

It’s _cold._ Is it always like this in Maine? Dean remembers sunny skies yesterday, hot on the Impala’s black paint.

There’s no sign of Cas. No coffee. No food in the cupboards or the fridge.

Baby’s engine coughs slowly to life when Dean pats her dashboard. They putter back toward town.

The fog stays with them the whole way. Oncoming headlights loom suddenly out of it, almost on top of them, and twice Dean has to nearly swerve into a ditch. When he makes it to town, he finds that there’s one grocery store, and it seems like half the town is there. Picking his way through the aisles, Dean can hear them gossiping about the unseasonal cold and the fog, but none of them seem too alarmed by it. _Not like it’s unusual in these parts,_ a woman says.

Dean pays for his groceries — ingredients for a few meals, coffee, two boxes of Crunch Cookie Crunch — and heads back to the cabin.

Cas is up when he gets there. Sitting at the kitchen table with a red sharpie tucked behind his ear, paging through the local newspapers. He doesn’t look up as Dean bustles around him, putting things away. Finally, Dean leans close with a mouthful of dry cereal crunching in his mouth to ask, “Whatcha looking for? Omens?”

Cas sighs when he looks up, mouth forming a pissy line. “Yes.”

“Nephilim have omens?”

This time, Cas looks away again, spreading his palms flat on his papers. “It’s difficult to say. There aren’t enough attested cases to form a true pattern. But this — it feels like last time. Like with —”

He stops there. Dean finishes the sentence for him. “Ran into a reaper the other day. She said they’re working on bringing him back. Jack.”

He sees Cas’s body jerk. His face turns up, eyes soft and open, lips parting as if toward a question, or a thanks. Then he catches himself. “When were you going to tell me this?”

“Soon as I talked to you,” Dean answers. “Thanks for that.”

Cas is rocking slightly in his chair. Like Dean’s words were a blow. “And you’re — are you here just to kill him again, or —”

This time Dean’s the one knocked backward. It takes him a moment to muster a response. “Cas,” he says, “I don’t —”

“I know what you don’t,” Cas answers. Short and hard.

Dean shuts up for a good long while after that.

\---

The day doesn’t warm up, and the fog doesn’t burn off. Occasionally, through shreds of it, Dean thinks he catches a glimpse of rocks spilling out below their cabin’s perch; of dark water rippling. He and Cas don’t talk again.

There’s one little heater on the wall, inadequate against the seeping chill. Dean drapes his coat over his torso and curls up on the couch, as tight a ball as he can make himself.

A couple hours later he hears movement. Footsteps creaking on the floorboards. Then a warm, soft weight settles over him: a blanket. A hand presses briefly against his shoulder, and his whole side feels warm.

He doesn’t wake from the cold again.

\---

“I did — research,” says Cas. “Before the first time.”

They’ve been quiet all morning; Dean’s making burgers in a pan for lunch. He looks over and hopes the question is evident in his eyes.

“For Kelly, I mean. We bought diapers at Costco. I took a doula class online.”

Dean snorts. He can’t help himself. The image is too funny — Cas, bent quizzical over a laptop — and then it’s replaced by another image: Cas, dead on the ground. He swallows.

“We found them,” he says. “The diapers, I mean. After you —”

They both go quiet again.

\---

It doesn’t warm up that day either. If anything it’s colder, hard wind blowing in from the east. Cas turns on the radio after a while and they listen to the weather report: storm coming in off the Atlantic. Residents are warned to prepare for loss of power.

Dean goes out to the Impala later. He has to dig a bit to find it — it’s at the bottom of his glovebox. Good thing Lilith didn’t spot it.

“Found this also,” he says. “In your truck.”

Cas takes the mixtape. He regards it for a long minute, eyebrows drawn together. Then he turns to the radio and presses the button to open up the cassette tape holder — slides it in.

As “Ramble On” starts, Dean closes his eyes. He’s an idiot. He should never have put this song first. He should have —

“You know I never wanted you to,” he says, and his voice comes out rough. “To — go.”

Cas says, “Dean —”

“No, shut up. Let me.” It’s hard to breathe. “I —”

But he can’t.

Cas watches him a while longer, then goes back to his work.

Later, though, he comes to sit beside Dean on the couch. They watch five episodes of _Scooby-Doo_ on Dean’s phone before Cas catches Dean yawning one too many times, extracts himself, and disappears into the bedroom.

The power goes out in the middle of the night.

Dean wakes up to the wind howling, windows rattling in their frames. His feet, where they’re sticking out past the blanket, are freezing, and he wishes he’d left his boots on.

He wishes Cas would come and, and —

He doesn’t want anything he’s allowed to want. He closes his eyes, fighting not to shiver, and sinks instead into the memory of Cas pressed against him on the couch, bending low over the screen of his phone, thigh warm against Dean’s thigh.

It’s been a while of that — Dean isn’t exactly sure how long — when he gets startled out of his reverie by a strong hand gripping his collar. Dean yelps, flailing briefly for a weapon, before recognizing Cas glaring down at him in the dark.

He lets Cas drag him into the bedroom. He wonders if he’s dreaming. Cas bullies him into the bed and slides in next to him, pulling the covers up to both their chins.

Dean wakes, hours later, to the sound of sleet lashing the windows, and Cas’s arm, warm across his ribs.

\---

Cas is asleep. That’s weird — sleeping isn’t really Cas’s thing. Dean levers himself slowly out of the bed.

The power’s still out. Fortunately, the stove runs on propane — Dean boils water there and uses the coffee machine as a pourover. He can actually see farther from the cabin than he has yet, even through the driving rain. The spruce trees are tossing wildly in the wind, and there’s ocean all around, steel blue and frothing with whitecaps. They could be at the end of the world.

When Cas emerges from the bedroom, he accepts the mug Dean offers him with a mild grunt of thanks. “So,” says Dean. “You sleep now.”

Cas seems to ponder that question, sipping. “Sometimes.”

They drink their coffee in silence for a while after that. Then Cas says, “Tomorrow, I think. If he’s coming — he’s coming tomorrow.”

Dean raises his eyebrows. “ _Something’s_ coming. Unless you think all this is —”

Cas laughs.

\---

The day only gets colder. The wind is screaming outside, testing the cabin’s walls, and it barely gets light enough to see their way around inside without tripping. Cas finds a hurricane lamp and lights it. The room seems warmer in the glow of the small flame.

Halfway through the afternoon, the rain changes to snow. The radio’s fuzzed out long since — strains of music and weather reports devoured by static. Dean guesses he could try driving into town, take it slow on the slick roads, but — that’s not the point of this, is it.

Cas makes soup for dinner. He’s shy about it, but it’s good — simple, hearty. Dean warms up some bread on the stovetop to go with it.

“Claire and I learned this recipe together,” Cas confesses after a while. “On one of my visits to Sioux Falls. Jack loved it. I started making it for him when he was sick.”

Dean has a spoonful in his mouth. He swallows carefully, watching Cas — the tremor in his hands, the tiny glint in his eye.

“Do you think,” he asks, voice low, “do you think we’ll get back — which version of Jack?”

Cas shoots him a look. It’s red-rimmed, worried, but it still manages to spear Dean against the wall. “Does it matter?”

Dean thinks about it. About Jack kneeling in that cemetery. About Jack with blood in his palm, sprawled across the floor.

Cas is watching him.

Dean says, “No.”

\---

They don’t go to bed that night. It’s an unspoken agreement. Instead, they watch the snow pile up in curves on the windowpanes, watch it blanket the Impala and frost the trees. The water is invisible in the darkness, but its roar against the rocks doesn’t let up. Dean makes them hot cocoa. “The kid liked the kind with the little marshmallows,” he tells Cas, as if that’s an explanation.

Around midnight, he asks, “Cas — can you still hear me? When I pray?”

Cas pauses halfway through a long sip. He’s on his third cup of cocoa. It foams on his upper lip, and Dean wishes he could reach out to wipe it clean.

“Only when — you’re very close,” Cas says, eventually. “I think.”

Dean closes his eyes.

He thinks, _I’m sorry._ He thinks, _I’ve been scared and fucked up and I’ve taken it out on you and you never deserved that._ He thinks, _Here I am trying to figure out how to fight God himself and what scares me most is you think I can’t even look at you. When I — when I never want to do anything but._

He waits a long moment. Then slowly, squinting, opens his eyes, one at a time.

Cas is beautiful in the glow of the hurricane lamp. Gold on his cheekbones, his forehead, the line of his nose. He squints, thoughtful, at the window. He asks, “Do you know how to dance?”

\---

“I,” says Dean. “What?”

Cas turns to look at him, and whatever he sees on Dean’s face, it makes him smile. “Jack and I watched _Dirty Dancing_ one time. We found it on your Netflix queue. He asked me if I knew how to dance like that, and I had to tell him no.”

Dean can’t help but chuckle. “I mean, I dunno if I can dance like Swayze, but —”

“Will you teach me?”

Dean isn’t about to say no.

Led Zeppelin isn’t the best slow-dancing music, but Dean skims through the mixtape until he finds something that’ll work. It’s ‘Thank You,’ because of course it is.

It takes the intro to get their hands situated, hip and shoulder and clasped together; Dean shows Cas how to move his feet. Then the beat drops out for the first few lines, and they’re just standing there awkwardly as Robert Plant sings: _If the sun refused to shine, I would still be loving you._

Dean flushes. Then he catches Cas humming along, wavering on the notes. He’s close — so close, his ribcage thrumming under Dean’s hand.

“ _When mountains crumble to the sea,_ ” Cas sings, low to Dean’s ear. “ _There will still be you and me._ ”

They stumble through the steps. Dean doesn’t know what he’s doing, can’t think or breathe, but Cas moves with him, uncomplaining. Once, his hand slides briefly down to Dean’s bicep, and Dean thinks of the scar that used to be there, where Cas gripped him to raise him from Hell.

Their foreheads are touching when the song dies. “There’s another one,” Dean says into quiet. ‘The Rain Song’ is starting. “I — didn’t put it on here. ‘All My Love.’ People think it’s a love song, but Plant wrote it for his son that died.”

He feels like he should release Cas; pull away. As if Cas can sense that, he only holds Dean tighter. “I know it.”

“You —”

Cas’s chuckle is warm; it puffs across Dean’s jaw, heats more than his skin. “I do learn on my own, you know. _He is a feather in the wind?”_

Dean’s heart has been refusing to break since that day in the cemetery. Since before — since he set foot in that circle of ash behind another snowy cabin, another too-cold day.

_Mom?_

He’s been clutching it — all of it, Jack and Mom and God and Cas — tight in his chest. Gripping it too hard to fall apart.

It feels like a wave crashing over him; like the thundering surf outside their door. Dean’s breath comes out in a great shuddering gust, and he thinks the next might be the one to break him —

Only it isn’t, because Cas is kissing him, hand warm and sure at the back of Dean’s neck, lips soft on his lips.

\---

In the morning, it’s green and warm outside, birds singing, snow dripping off the eaves.

They didn’t mean to fall asleep. The plan was to stay up all night, to wait for a sign — but Dean blinks stiffly awake on the couch to find Cas still curled against him, hair tickling Dean’s chin, nose tucked in the curve of his neck. “Cas,” says Dean, and finds his hand is already palming Cas’s hip. “Hey, Cas. Wake up. I think it’s —”

Cas stirs. He lifts his head, eyes bleary and hair sticking up, and for a moment Dean can’t breathe with love for him; then he manages, “Hey — I’ll make you coffee in a minute, but we should go check —”

Cas makes a bleary noise of assent. Slowly, he disentangles himself from Dean’s limbs, sits up, levers himself to his feet. Dean follows.

They blink at each other owlishly. Cas reaches to touch the curve of Dean’s cheek.

Then they stumble into boots and outside.

There’s a narrow path threading is way down through the rocks. Cas leads the way like he knows where he’s going, balancing with a hand on the rock wall as they drop down into a steep crevice. Dean follows, and after a minute, the way opens up again.

They’re on a sandy little beach, tucked away between the bluffs and nearly invisible from above. At the end of it, half in and half out of the water, a human body sprawls, washed up, pale in the sun.

Dean thinks, _he’ll catch his death of the cold —_

And Cas is crossing the sand, falling to his knees beside Jack. His hand is out, warmth gathering reluctantly to his palm, and Dean’s beside him. “Jack? Hey, Jack.”

There’s a long moment where nothing happens. Where Dean thinks they’re only here to mourn him again — out here on the edge of the world, at the brink of the sea and the sky.

Then Jack’s eyelids flutter. His lips move once without sound, and then, eyes coming into focus: “Dean?”

“ _Jack,_ ” says Cas, and pulls him into a hug.

Dean sits down hard in the sand.

\---

Jack rides with Cas when they leave. Slides into the passenger seat of the truck still wrapped in blankets, fingers clutching tight to his cup of hot cocoa. He’s smiling, and there are bright spots of color in his cheeks.

He hesitates before he closes his door, looking back at Dean. “You can ride with me later,” Dean tells him. “If you want.”

Jack’s mouth curves in a smile. He asks, shy, “Could I drive?”

Dean can’t help but laugh. Cas is looking fondly between them, heart shining out of his eyes.

“Sure, kid. Back roads only,” Dean calls as Jack closes his door.

Cas lingers, for a moment, by Baby’s hood. “I’ll see you at the first rest stop,” he murmurs, and then, “Dean —”

Dean kisses him to shut him up. When he pulls back, Cas is smiling. “Yeah?”

“Nothing.” He’s still smiling, wide and helpless. “You’ll call Sam when we’re back in service?”

Dean nods. Cas kisses him again, then climbs into the driver’s side of his truck. Dean hears Jack asking brightly, “So you and Dean —”

Dean opens the door of the Impala and slides inside. Then, at the last minute, he remembers —

The interior of the cabin already feels chilly again. Uninhabited. Dean presses the eject button on the radio, and the cassette door falls open.

Inside it’s empty. The mixtape’s already gone.

Dean glances out the window. Cas’s taillights are pulling away — bound toward their first stop, a diner in Bangor. The tape tucked in his glovebox, no doubt, or his pocket, next to his heart.

The Impala starts without hesitation. Her tires are sitting in little wells of mud after days of rain, but a touch of gas eases her out of them. Dean turns the wheel, rolls out of the driveway.

When he glances in the rearview mirror, there’s a red-headed woman standing on the cabin’s front step. She’s smiling, waving cheerily after him. He sees her mouth, _Good luck!_

_Reapers._ “Yeah, all right Jessica,” Dean mutters, and points his wheels toward home.

**Author's Note:**

> Rebloggable on [tumblr](https://gravelghosts.tumblr.com/post/189312490874/storm-windows-1506-coda-4k-g-deancas)!


End file.
